These days the halls of physics are so vast the first problem for those who seek new physics is: Where is one to begin? History shows physics offers signposts of a sort: The path to new physics starts with what is wrong with old physics. At the beginning of the twentieth century only a few […]
Physicists have a mental image of the way the universe works. Most think of it as driven by energy. Even leading British physicist Sir Roger Penrose falls for this. He should know better. The conventional wisdom begins with all mass of the universe exploding out in the Big Bang. No-one knows why it would do […]
A recent estimate tells us the next deep new idea in physics could lead to a quadrillion-dollar economic boom. This gives us a huge self-interest in moving new physics along. How does new physics happen? Specifically, what we are waiting for is Planck-scale physics. It deals with what goes on at a scale far smaller […]
The concept of free will presents a problem. Physics is all about the rules of causation. Once there are rules there is no room for free will. This seems incontrovertible. But we will see that it is wrong. The argument for lack of free will persuades many physicists. Albert Einstein was a big fan of […]
For more than a hundred years a metric has been seen as a good thing. Turns out it’s not; indeed it’s definitely bad. First, what’s a metric? That gets complicated; it’s an assumed property of space. It’s like a ruler science uses to make measurements of many kinds, like lengths of lines (both straight and […]
Physics has two great theories, general relativity and quantum mechanics. Each does very well in its domain. That is nice but plainly isn’t real. Each is fundamentally at odds with the other. And neither of them works at all with the conditions that existed when the universe began. How can we find a single theory […]
We like to think of laws of physics as fundamental, as properties of the universe. Actually, not. They are our inventions, tales we tell ourselves in terms of concepts we construct. They are good statistical approximations. But they don’t tell us what’s really going on. The real world is happening at Planck scale, named for […]
We need new physics; and new physics needs new math. It won’t be easy but it is a huge opportunity. More than a hundred years ago physics chose to assume the universe is analog. It is now becoming clear that this is wrong: our universe is digital. We took a wrong turn that is having […]
Does the world work on cause and effect or is this a world of random chaos? This question needs exploration at the universe’s smallest scale, far smaller than that of the atom. We are coming to see the answer is: neither and both! Long ago, physicists as well as philosophers wrestled with this question. Albert […]